Rigging a hiking headlamp for video

jhisa

jhisa

I was looking at LED head lamps from REI marketed to hikers and climbers as a subsitute for one of those corny on camera video lights. They actually don't look too bad with 4-5 leds and 3 brightness settings for $30-$40 or so. For my documentary I am in and out of dimly lit areas, sometimes with little or no time to adjust shutter speed settings. I was thinking I could either ghetto rig it with some sticky velcro to a spot I have between my shotgun and lens or just wear it. Is there anyone whos done that before or owns one of these things who could comment?
 
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jhisa said:
I was looking at LED head lamps from REI marketed to hikers and climbers as a subsitute for one of those corny on camera video lights. They actually don't look too bad with 4-5 leds and 3 brightness settings for $30-$40 or so. For my documentary I am in and out of dimly lit areas, sometimes with little or no time to adjust shutter speed settings. I was thinking I could either ghetto rig it with some sticky velcro to a spot I have between my shotgun and lens or just wear it. Is there anyone whos done that before or owns one of these things who could comment?
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...you mean the ones on the helmet itself?! That's great! :lol:

I would love to know if this works, but I would think that you would have to be careful of anything that could cast a funky shadow across your subject. That is about as guerrilla filmmaking as I have ever heard of! That's so crazy it might just work... :D

-- spinner :cool:
 
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Wow, that's a brilliant idea. If you try this, let me know. I'm seriously considering trying it myself now, just because a lighting helmet would be sooo cool.
 
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If you are familiar with the brightness of "normal" incondescent bulbs, then you can estimate the brightness of the LED light using a 7.5W/LED brightness metric. Therefore, 4LEDs would be approximately as bright as a 30W conventional light. This is only a rough guideline, since LEDs vary, and the reflector/lens setup will affect efficiency.

The other issue is the distribution of light. A helmet light may or may not provide an even light distribution. You'll get 30W of light for about 10W of power, so the power efficiency would be excellent. I've been playing with building my own LED light. I have 20, bright, white LEDs and I've hooked them up in various configurations to experiment. For my purposes, an array of 10 LEDs would be minimal, but light output is alway relative to how much ambient light you're trying to overcome and how far you are from your subject.
 
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if you're handy at all with electronics, you might want to look at building a ring light out of LEDs, something that you could mount right on the end of the camera (with the lens through a hole in the center) that would keep your light pointed straight forward. likely you could power it from a hot shoe as well, so that'd be a plus. I would think it would be pretty useless for anything other than documentary style shooting though, but I could be wrong.

Here's some links about buying such a device:

http://www.microscopesusa.com/LED_ring_light.html
http://www.bugeyedigital.com/product_main/sri-u5200.html
http://www.clouddome.com/specs/led.html

and info about building one:
http://www.brainerror.net/texts_macroring_en.php
http://users.pandora.be/cisken/LED_ringlight/LED_ringlight.html


There ya go that should help.. I'm sure knightly will be working on building one of these within a week or so.. :lol: I would think that using more LEDs would prove much more effective than the six illustrated in the first DIY example, but anyway, there ya have it.
 
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